More Than a Mango

This story is about a canal and a plastic milk crate. It takes place on a mango farm in Haiti. The farmer has 2 mango trees. The trees produce her entire crop and her income of approximately $2 a day. As described by NPR’s This American Life, to double production, this farmer just needs water from a nearby river that a short canal would deliver. For Americans to buy more of her crop, she just needs a crate to minimize bruising. To get the crate, she needs aid from an NGO. For the NGO to provide the crate, she has to participate in a farmers’ cooperative. For the cooperative to get the crate, they need property on which to store crates. To get the property, the farmers have to be willing to give it to the coop.

I think you see where this is going. It is complicated. And, to make matters worse, Haiti is listed by the World Bank as one of the toughest places in Latin America to do business. Ranking close to last (#32) in such categories as “ease of starting a business” and “construction permits,” Haiti’s bureaucracy presents formidable business obstacles.

The Economic Lesson

Countless economic issues relate to Haiti’s canal and crates story. Technology (a canal), tools (crates), and transport (roads) are only several challenges facing a mango farmer who wants to double her production. Add huge transaction costs (“red tape”) to the tale and you wind up, so far, with a sad ending. You also have a production possibilities curve that will not increase.

To hear a surprising solution, you might want to listen to the econtalk podcast on charter cities from Stanford’s Paul Romer.

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Elaine Schwartz has spent her career sharing the interesting side of economics. At the Kent Place School in Summit, NJ, she has been honored through an Endowed Chair in Economics and the History Department chairmanship. At the same time, she developed curricula and wrote several books including Understanding Our Economy (originally published by Addison Wesley as Economics Our American Economy) and Econ 101 ½ (Avon Books/Harper Collins). Elaine has also written in the Encyclopedia of New Jersey (Rutgers University Press) and was a featured teacher in the Annenberg/CPB video project “The Economics Classroom.” Beyond the classroom, she has presented Econ 101 ½ talks and led
workshops for the Foundation for Teaching Economics, the National Council on Economic Education and for the Concord Coalition.